Easter with Will and Jake

I hope you all had a blessed Easter. Things here were a little different...not much going on for Lent and Easter. No Walmart aisles filled with candy and plastic eggs, no new Easter shoes, no viewing of "The Robe" on TCM, no Maundy Thursday worship or Good Friday Youth Service. For the first time in 14 years, I was not filling 3 Easter baskets. (Yes, everyone still puts out their basket in our house!) Easter Sunday was, in fact, a work day, but, thank goodness, the kids at the American School had the day off. There is an upside to all of this...I found that fewer commercial distractions helped me to focus a bit more on the true meaning of the most important holy day of the Christian year. On Friday, during the children's classes that take place at Grace Fellowship (our church here), I gathered all of the children together for a telling of the Easter story with Resurrection Eggs. The "event" of course, included cupcakes! (....you can't take the Christian Educator out of the girl!) We did go back to the church villa at 7:00 pm on Easter evening. There was a very nice service with scripture readings and beautiful music, including a wonderful solo performance of "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?" I must say, I did miss my home church in Sugar Land, but God took very good care of us, even over here on the other side of the world! It was a wonderful Easter!

We had some families over for an Easter meal on Saturday afternoon. The Van Hoosers were included in that group. You may have heard me talk about the fact that Sam's first buddies here in Doha were twins his age named Will and Jake (Van Hooser)! We could not believe it when we first heard it...our house would be filled again, at times, with three boys with all the right names: Will, Jake and Sam! Back to my story, Will and Jake were here for the Easter dinner so I took their photo with Sam.

This morning I got an email from Mom and the subject line was Easter with Will and Jake. She had sent me a note and a couple of pics of my Will and Jake at her house for Easter dinner. I quickly replied to her note, recycling the subject line of Easter with Will and Jake and sent her the picture of Sam with his buddies Will and Jake at our house for Easter dinner! Like I said, it was a wonderful Easter! (P.S. Will and Jake Shrull - I love you and I miss you! P.S.S. Don and Mom -Thanks for the photos and for feeding my boys!)